Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Crusader Dolls Part IV

Yeah, they are back, and they are ALMOST done. These guys got their helmets and clothes!

Si, han regresado, y CASI estan listos. Ya tienen cascos y ropa!

Hospitaller Knight/Caballero Hospitalario

English Knight/Caballero Ingles

Templar's helmet/Casco templario

I finished the helmets in 3 steps, letting the paper clay dry between stages, it is easier. The Templar's helmet was kind of challenging, but once I saw the main structure of the form it was easier to get, it looks like a bucket upside down.

For designing the cross in the chest (Hospitaller and Templar) I simplified it to the plus sign: +

The reason is that I don't want to relate them to any religion, the times they lived were very different to ours in many senses. We cannot judge them in the context of our own present. Neither in the context of anything that surrounded them by then. Included religion.

By making these dolls I want to emphasize the good qualities that embodied these men, and add a + symbol to make them even bigger. The curious thing is that those qualities have survived the pass of time, because they belong to the human race. This is my list of crusader's good traits :

1. Courage: Because it takes a lot of courage to throw yourself against a huge wall, while a rain of arrows and "Greek fire" (highly flammable chemical) falls on you like confetti.

2. Ingenuity: Because we have to be really naive to believe that by taking the cross and suffer from now on, we already deserve the erasing of all of our sins. In this case what I like about their ingenuity is the wish to be pure, and clean again.

3. Perseverance: Want to take a walk from any western European country to Jerusalem? Expend 6 months under the rain, the snow, the cold, the heat, the mosquitoes, the bandits, the hunger, etc, etc? Backpackers do that nowdays, but they don't have to wear a chain mail, carry a heavy sword, shield, helmet (no matter how heavy the backback, nothing compares to that of the crusader). Now imagine the horse, carrying the crusader with all his equipment plus horse armor! They were the real heroes.